A Palace Beyond Time

At one point during the restoration of Rajgarh Palace, word spread through neighbouring villages that workers had discovered buried treasure. Crowds arrived hoping to catch a glimpse of the supposed riches, and even the district collector was drawn into the commotion. There was only one problem. No treasure had been found.

“It caused a huge uproar, and people gathered to find the treasure we never found,” said chief architect Ravi Kumar Gupta. The rumour was perhaps inevitable in Panna, a region whose history has long been intertwined with diamonds. Local folklore traces that association to Maharaja Chhatrasal, the first independent Bundela ruler and founder of the kingdom of Panna. According to legend, the wandering saint Mahamati Prannathji gave Chhatrasal a sword and foretold that diamonds would be found beneath the land he could cover on horseback in a single night. The prophecy was said to have come true, helping provide the wealth with which Chhatrasal established his kingdom in 1675.

Rajgarh Palace came later. According to palace historian Anurag Shukla, Chhatrasal’s grandson Raja Hindupat commissioned it after ascending the throne in 1758. Built in the distinctive Bundela style, the palace brought together Rajput, Mughal and Delhi Sultanate influences and eventually became a seat of royal power in Panna.

Centuries later, the property caught the attention of another influential figure: Prithvi Raj Singh “Biki” Oberoi, the legendary hotelier who led The Oberoi Group for decades. Oberoi had famously maintained that he would never use the word “Palace” in the name of any of his hotels unless the building had genuinely been a palace. Rajgarh needed no creative licence. The Madhya Pradesh government handed the property to the Oberoi Group in 1996, and Gupta began work on it in 2001. What followed became a project stretching across roughly 25 years, through changing plans, pauses, construction delays and an evolving vision for how the palace should be brought back to life. Which it was, in November 2025.

Its condition varied dramatically. Later sections remained largely intact, while older portions had caved-in roofs, cracked traditional ladao roofing, weakened walls and foundation settlement.

The mandate, however, remained clear: repair rather than remake. Original rooms were retained. Damaged plaster was repaired rather than stripped away. Traditional lime mortar and khamira whitewash were used, while arches, kanguras and other architectural features were preserved wherever possible. “Despite dealing with dilapidated roofs and peeling pillars and walls, we repaired 90 per cent of the palace while only replacing the remaining 10 per cent,” Gupta said.

Making the building function as a modern hotel presented a different problem. The historic approach to the palace rose more than 50 ft above ground and had originally been designed for rulers arriving on elephants. Its high steps and broad treads were hardly suited to contemporary guests, requiring lifts to be introduced without disrupting the old structure.

Inside, another layer of modernity had to disappear altogether. Air-conditioning, electrical systems, fire-fighting infrastructure, sewage and water pipes all had to be threaded through the centuries-old building. In places, services were carried through concealed channels beneath the central courtyard.

“The challenge was restoration, but the other challenge was converting it into a hotel, and then converting it into a hotel of Oberoi level, where nothing is visible,” Gupta said.

Water created yet another hurdle. The estate’s three lakes, full when Gupta first encountered the property, later dried up. Oberoi wanted them revived, eventually requiring water to be brought from the Ken River through a pipeline commissioned in 2014.

Through it all, Gupta remained attached to the project in a way few others could. “You fall in love with such properties,” he said.

After more than two decades, Rajgarh finally became the kind of hotel Biki Oberoi’s own rule had demanded: not a hotel designed to look like a palace, but an actual palace given another life.

The Information

• Address: Tehsil Rajnagar, Post Office Rajgarh, Chandranagar, Madhya Pradesh 471101

• Keys: 65 rooms and suites

• Connectivity: Approx 18 km from Khajuraho Airport and Khajuraho Railway Station; around 30 minutes from the Khajuraho temples and Panna National Park

• Website: oberoihotels.com